


anything can happen (if you take a chance)

by archetypically



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, I Don't Even Know, this is so dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archetypically/pseuds/archetypically
Summary: He isn't exactly a stranger to after school detention, andthatparticular aspect of the whole thing is just another normal Tuesday afternoon for him.The fact that he's here because he punched a guy — well, two guys, actually, if he's being technical — isn't the most unusual thing, either. No, what setsthisparticular Tuesday apart is that he isn't here by himself.





	anything can happen (if you take a chance)

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

Time, Peter knows, has a really funny way of doing some _really_ funny things — especially in this room, where the hands on the clock just don't seem to move at all. Trust him, he knows; he's been here before. Well, okay, if he's honest? He's been here a lot. It's not like he wants to, but it's also not his fault that Nova High School has some really stupid policies — like, for example, "You can't have that out in the hallway, Mr. Quill" and "Take those things off your head!" — and what's it to any of them, including Principal Prime, what he decides to do between classes? Whatever.

… Anyway, all he's saying is that he isn't exactly a stranger to after school detention, and _that_ particular aspect of the whole thing is just another normal Tuesday afternoon for him.

The fact that he's here because he punched a guy - well, two guys, actually, if he's being technical - isn't the most unusual thing, either. No, what sets _this_ particular Tuesday apart is that he isn't here by himself.

He glances over to his left for a moment, where Gamora is sitting a desk away, still as a statue, glaring at the wall in front of her like it's personally offended her. Look, he gets it — when he imagined spending time (at least kind of) alone with the girl he's had a massive crush on for several months now, and he has, he's thought about it, a lot, he'll totally admit it, this is nothing close to what he'd had in mind. Ideally, they wouldn't be in this room, and they wouldn't even be at school at all; ideally, they'd be somewhere like the movies or a cool coffee shop or something, or, even _more_ ideally, he'd have asked her to prom and she'd have said yes, and they'd be slow dancing, and —

Ideally, she wouldn't be angry with him, either. He doesn't _know_ that she is right now, but he totally figures that she is, and he wouldn't blame her for that in the slightest.

And - yeah, he's just off to a _really_ great freaking start.

At some point at least, like, twenty minutes ago, Mr. Ogord had fallen asleep, just like he usually does, but Peter has, you know, enough experience to know that there's no point in trying to take advantage of that and make a break for it. See, Mr. Ogord has this _way_ of hearing everything — like, he could probably hear a freaking pin drop, no joke — and you wouldn't be halfway to the door or the window or _whatever_ before getting full-stop busted. He's had his detention extended by at least three days on several different occasions by trying to pull the exact same shit, and he may be a lot of things, but he's not stupid enough to pull it again now.

So. He's got no choice but to finish out the rest of (eternity) the assigned hour here. Or he dies from actual boredom or something like that. Whatever comes first.

_Tick. Snore. Tick. Snore._

He drums his fingers on the top of his desk, only using his left hand because, honestly, he's not sure when he'll be able to move the right one again; every time he tries to stretch it, it's just sore and stiff, and _yeah_ , this is gonna cause him some massive problems in the near future, which he didn't think about. Truth be told, he doesn't think about a lot of things.

It's not ten seconds before Gamora whips her head around, glaring her daggers at _him_ now instead of the wall.

He stops, right then and there. It's, like, the least he can do, considering that it's definitely kind-of-sort-of his fault that she's in here, too.

She goes back to having a staring contest with her wall, and he — goes back to being twitchy, without any option of anything he can do to help it.

The hand on the clock moves by another microscopic increment. _Tick._

He's going to die here, literally die, from boredom. At some point later, Yondu's going to have to come in here grumbling and drag his corpse out to — who knows where, because he's actually going to die.

And he's mentally playing out the whole scenario, when, suddenly, Gamora's voice cuts into his thoughts.

"That was stupid. What you did." Yeah, no shit, he thinks; he doesn't need anyone to tell him _that_. He drops his eyes back to the top of his desk, keeping his hands firmly below it. "But —" She starts again and stops, and he looks up to find an expression on her face that's - hesitant? He's not exactly sure how to describe it, and he thinks it's almost a whole minute before she manages to finish with: "Thank you."

Whoa. Out of all the things he'd been expecting her to say to him, that — that hadn't been in the top two-hundred, and it totally feels like it just knocked the air right out of him. He opens and then closes his mouth a few times, before —

"They're jerks and they totally deserved it," he says, finally, lifting a shoulder at an attempt at a shrug before giving it up. "Those things they were saying about you — _really_ not cool." He shifts in his seat a little, so that he's actually facing her now. "And you, man — you…" A pause. "That was amazing. I don't think they ever expected that, like, in a million freaking years, and — okay, seriously, I don't know why you're thanking _me_ , but…."

He cuts himself off there, because it's then that her face softens, and — it occurs to him that this is the first time he's ever seen her smile. It's tiny, barely there, but, you know, _there_ , and his stomach does about twenty flips in the span of, like, ten seconds, and he almost forgets to breathe. That seriously has to be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in his life, he honestly swears it has to, and, man, his luck has somehow _super_ turned around today.

It's one of those types of moments that isn't meant to last, though. There's the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, and —

"No talking," Mr. Ogord gruffs, making them both jump a little. "Or you'll both be here into next month."

Like he said — that dude's got a way of hearing _everything_.

Time really _does_ do funny things, because the rest of the hour passes in kind of a blur, with the mental image of Gamora's face, smiling at him, the only thing he sees. It's with a totally ungraceful sort of stumble that he gets out of his chair at the end of the hour, to the point that he almost literally falls on his face before he manages to stop himself at the last second — which is great, because that would've taken the cake for mortifying. What isn't great, though, is Mr. Ogord stopping him _just_ when he's on his way out, with an actual _sneer_ and an "Until next time, Quill."

_Dick_.

He figures that Gamora will probably already be gone by time he manages to step out of the room, but, to his surprise, he finds her waiting just outside the door. For him? _That's_ a thought, one that causes his feet to feel like they instantly turn to lead and his throat to go instantly dry and all this stuff like that.

"So, uh —" He reflexively rubs the back of his neck with his right hand, only to remember right at the moment he cringes that it's totally useless. A really, _really_ awkward silence, the most awkward of all the awkward silences he's ever experienced _ever_ , he's not kidding, sits between them. He feels like he has to say something, and that something has to be cool and not-stupid, like, that's really important, because he's got this one shot, somehow, and he _can't_ blow it. And yet what he comes up with is: "See you, um, you know — tomorrow, I guess."

_God_ , he's such an idiot.

But she smiles again — this time a little wider, a little more obviously. "See you tomorrow." He feels his heart literally skip a beat.

He watches her turn on her heel and walk away, and — he swears, honestly, that he could float.

**Author's Note:**

> for general guardians screaming, or screaming about these losers in particular, come find me on [tumblr](http://leavepeterquillalone.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
